Rona Anderson (3 August 1926 – 23 July 2013) was a Scottish stage, film, and television actress. She appeared in TV series and on the stage and films throughout the 1950s. She appeared in the films Scrooge and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and on TV in Dr Finlay's Casebook and Dixon of Dock Green.
Biography
Rona Anderson was born in Edinburgh to James and Evelyn (née Thomson) Anderson. She was educated in her home town and briefly in Ottawa during the war. She trained for the stage at the Glover Turner-Robertson School in Edinburgh.
In 1951, she married fellow actor Gordon Jackson, with whom she had appeared in Floodtide (1949) and remained with him until his death from bone cancer on 15 January 1990.
Stage work
Anderson had an English accent despite being brought up in Scotland. Anderson played the role of Alice (originally named "Belle" by Dickens) in Scrooge (1951), a film adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. She appeared alongside Lee Patterson in Man with a Gun (1958), directed by Montgomery Tully, while her last major film appearance was in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Following this film she continued her work on the stage and in television series.
From 1953 until 1983, Anderson appeared in several British television programmes. She appeared in three episodes of The Human Jungle (1964–1965) during its second season. Anderson played the role of Mary on the British sitcom Bachelor Father (1970–1971). Anderson later appeared in an episode of the long-running crime series The Professionals entitled Cry Wolf, in which her husband, Gordon Jackson, played George Cowley.
Critical assessment
Of her numerous roles in British B films in the 1950s, the film historians Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane wrote: "She was essentially crisp and wholesome, in her open Scots prettiness and brought a proper spirited resourcefulness to these assorted plucky heroines, making them a good deal more endearing and credible than the screenplays deserved."
Personal life and death
Anderson was married to the actor Gordon Jackson from 1951 until his death in 1990.
Anderson died on 23 July 2013, aged 86.
Selected filmography
- Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948) – Joan Maxted
- Floodtide (1949) – Mary Anstruther
- Poet's Pub (1949) – Joanna Benbow
- The Twenty Questions Murder Mystery (1950) – Mary Game
- Torment (1950) – Joan
- Her Favourite Husband (1950) – Stellina
- Home to Danger (1951) – Barbara Cummings
- Scrooge (1951) – Alice
- Whispering Smith Hits London (1952) – Anne
- Circumstantial Evidence (1952) – Linda Harrison
- Noose for a Lady (1953) – Jill Hallam
- Black 13 (1953) – Claire
- Double Exposure (1954)
- The Black Rider (1954) – Mary Plack
- Stock Car (1955) – Katie Glebe
- Little Red Monkey (1955) – Julia Jackson
- The Flaw (1955) – Monica Oliveri
- A Time to Kill (1955) – Sallie Harbord
- Shadow of a Man (1956) – Linda Bryant
- Soho Incident (aka Spin a Dark Web) (1956) – Betty Walker
- Man with a Gun (1958) – Stella
- Devils of Darkness (1965) – Anne
- River Rivals (1967)
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) – Miss Lockhart